Making African Heritage Accessible to All
Kenneth Cuvalay
Advisory Board Member
Kenneth Cuvalay
I fight for equality and human rights, and against injustice toward the most vulnerable people in our communities, the Afrikan people.Email:
cuvalay@hotmail.comMy name is Kenneth Cuvalay. I was born in 1952 and raised on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius (former Netherlands Antilles). My nationality is Dutch and my roots are Afrikan, living in the diaspora. My parents were both of Afrikan origin. My mother was born on the island of St. Kitts and my father on St. Eustatius. I grew up in a poor family with thirteen children. At the age of eight, I started working to support our family economically. Only at a later age did I go to school and develop myself. Since then I have been fighting for equality and human rights, and against injustice toward the most vulnerable people in our communities, the Afrikan people.
Political and Social Work
I was at the cradle of the main founder of the establishment and development of psychiatric and addiction care at St. Eustatius and Saba. It is important that there is access to care, the implementation of the care, and the methods used are geared to the needs of the population on the islands. The Dutch government and many mental health care institutions in the Netherlands pay absolutely no attention to this. I sought connections with health organizations in the Caribbean. In the Netherlands, too, it is important that transcultural care is given attention. People of Afrikan origin have different ideas about health, being sick, and about treatment Methods.
Ideology
The basis of my ideological conviction is founded in the struggle of my life against economic inequality and the legacy of Dutch Transatlantic colonialism and the enslavement of the Afrikan people, the legacy of colonialism that still forms the basis for structural underdevelopment, exploitation, institutional racism, and discrimination, which continues to marginalize the Afrikan people and the continued domination of the people within the communities of the so-called former Netherlands Antilles, by destroying their cultural identity, heritage, and self-determination. In other words, it is a heinous crime against humanity that continues against Afrikans.
As a senior psychiatric nurse on seconded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) to the Caribbean Netherlands to set up addiction and psychiatric care there. In recent years I worked as a clinical manager in the Windward Islands (St. Eustatius and Saba) at the organization Mental Health Caribbean.- Founder and coordinator of the grassroots movement European Anti-Racism Network (EARN). This is a movement of black FNV trade union members in the Netherlands who fight against institutional racism in the labor market, the workplace, and within the FNV itself.
Expertise
- Afrikan history, spiritual development, Afrikan-centered education, and the rewriting of our history that European and Western colonial powers have distorted. Mental health and addiction care. Identity and awareness of strength and self-esteem.
- Institutional racism in the labor market, workplace, and education systems. Transatlantic slave trade and slavery history and the influence on our thinking, acting, and how we see and develop ourselves as a community.
- Human rights and social and economic inequality for the African residents of Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, St. Maarten, St. Eustatius, and Saba in the Dutch overseas territories under Dutch rule in the Caribbean
General note
The explanation of why our group within UCF and other Afrikan grassroots’ movement spell Afrika with a “k” instead of a “c”.
This spelling is based on the following insights:
- It is a Pan-Afrikan spelling which relates both to the Afrikan continent and to the Diaspora;
- It reflects the spelling of “Afrika” in all Afrikan languages;
- It includes the concept of “ka”, the vital energy that sustains and creates.
Ka The Soul, there are three elements to the Egyptian concept of the soul: Ka, Ba and Akh.
- Ka is the life force or spiritual double of the person.
- The royal Ka symbolizes a pharaoh’s right to rule,
- A universal force that passed from one pharaoh to the next,
The five parts of the soul are:
Ren, Ka, Ib, Ba and Sheut
- The meaning of ren is gantong, which can be translated as “to open oneself to. affected by the spiritual, human, and natural beings in the surrounding world. word ren can be traced to the word shi f3, which referred to the spirituals,
- Ka The Soul. There are three elements to the Egyptian concept of the soul: Ka, Ba, and Akh. Ka is the life force or spiritual double of the person. The royal Ka symbolized a pharaoh’s right to rule, a universal force that passed from one pharaoh to the next,
- Ib (Heart) The heart is the seat of a person’s personality and spirit, and so the most important part of the body. It was not removed during mummification, but was protected by a powerful amulet – the heart scarab,
- Ba, The Ba is most often translated as ‘soul’ and was a human-headed bird the aspect that could speed between earth and the heavens and, specifically, between the afterlife and one’s corpse,
- Sheut – Shadow Believed to be the shadow of the person. The Sheut was the the essence of the person and the person could not exist with them nor could a the person exists without their shadow.